This disclosure relates broadly and generally to a computer-implemented land planning System and Method, such as that designed to generate one or more conceptual fit solutions to a user-defined land development problem. In exemplary embodiments described herein, the “problem” is expressed in terms of optimizing land development based on costs and budget constraints. Alternatively, the present disclosure may focus on other economic considerations such as return on investment (ROI). One example described below relates to the planning and development of a single pad commercial site. The present concept, however, is equally applicable to the planning and development of multi-pad commercial, mixed use, and residential sites, communications easements, roadways and railways, and the like.
Modern Geographical Information System (GIS) technologies use digital information, for which various digitized data creation methods are used. The most common method of data creation is digitization, where a hard copy map or survey plan is transferred into a digital medium through the use of a computer-aided design (CAD) program, and geo-referencing capabilities. With the wide availability of ortho-rectified imagery (both from satellite and aerial sources), heads-up digitizing is becoming the main avenue through which geographic data is extracted. Heads-up digitizing involves the tracing of geographic data directly on top of the aerial imagery instead of by the traditional method of tracing the geographic form on a separate digitizing tablet (heads-down digitizing). In one exemplary embodiment, the present disclosure may utilize an online GIS database to facilitate the process of data collection. The exemplary GIS database may be operatively linked to an Optimization Engine, discussed below, to quickly generate conceptual site designs, improving the quality and speed of the site design decision process.
The process commonly used today by professional real estate developers, corporations, government entities and others to assess land for engineering feasibility, cost of developing, and investment purposes is time consuming, inaccurate, and expensive. Unfortunately, the current process is getting even more complex and expensive due to added bureaucratic complications with land use zoning, environmental protection requirements, extended permitting processes, as well as the availability and escalating cost of land in desirable areas. This problem affects a broad spectrum of land users including, for example, real estate developers (office/industrial, commercial, retail, residential), corporations which own and use real estate (public/private), and government entities (Federal, State, County, City).
For each of the above users, assessing the feasibility of a land site for development typically involves a land development team including one or more architects, engineers, and land planners. Many of these team members are engaged to layout and plan the intended uses on the site being considered. This initial planning process can take from 2 days to four weeks, and usually results in a single schematic drawing with limited information (e.g., will the site support the building footprints or building lots and the necessary streets and/or parking lots?). At this point, based largely on intuition and a “gut feeling” about the project, the developer will choose to contract for additional planning and engineering to more accurately assess the feasibility of the plan and the budget. This process can take 2 weeks to 16 weeks and usually results in only one option that is based on the designer's experience but is not optimized in any respect. This information is then used to estimate a more accurate budget. Often times value engineering is required to bring the design back within the original budget. This process takes 2 weeks to 6 weeks. The final budget is not generally determined until the end of the planning process—some 3-4 months after initial consideration of the land site.
The above planning process often must occur before the property is purchased, and requires substantial investment in legal fees and earnest money to hold the property for an extended length of time.
After this 4 week to 28-week process (average 16 weeks) and considerable expense and risk of lost opportunity, the developer must assess the risk of purchasing and developing the property based on one un-optimized design option. Unfortunately, the process outlined above is complicated even further by miscommunication and disconnect between the many groups involved, which often results in bad designs, bad budgets, disagreements, and bad projects.
The present applicant recognized that the land development industry needs a major paradigm shift, which is now possible through advances in mathematical modeling and computing hardware. One primary goal of the present disclosure is to fix the problems outlined above through a virtual engineering system that can produce many optimized alternatives for land development—including the planning, engineering, and budgeting of each potential solution. In exemplary implementations, this computing process may be achieved in a short period—often within a matter of hours.
Current Data Collection Process
Of all mandatory information needed for the conceptual design of a civil engineering site, the existing topography is generally the most difficult to readily and accurately obtain. This often means that civil engineers cannot generate a grading plan for the site at that stage, which means the cost for grading that site is guessed instead and often highly inaccurate.
FIG. 1 demonstrates current information/data flows going from the User to an Optimization Engine (also referred to herein as an “Optimizer”) such as described in Applicant's prior published U.S. Publication No. US/2010/0211512-A1 (U.S. Ser. No. 12/223,295)—the complete disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein. The user in many cases may be a civil engineer, but may also be a land developer, contractor or architect. By way of example, FIG. 1 indicates four common sources of data—surveyor, city/county/state, external software, and scanned images. A surveyor can physically go to a site and use his measuring equipment to generate an exact parcel map and give different levels of detail on the existing topography of the site, this is usually expensive and slow. The government (city/county/state) may have a local database of surveyed properties, cities and counties giving parcel data and topography with different levels of detail. This can be difficult to find, can be expensive, and may require specialists to convert the data correctly. Some external software may exist for group different topographical databases, but the output of these products is also difficult or infeasible to integrate with an Optimizer. Finally, paper maps may be scanned and contour lines traced and entered. While this may be feasible, it clearly is not ideal. Such processes are slow, often inaccurate and often not up to date.
Geographical Information System
As discussed above, a GIS can store any type of data that is associated with a location and is specialized in associating that data based on locality. It is used in many different fields ranging from city planning to vehicle navigation systems. A GIS database can store exact locations of houses, parcels with their owner information, roads with their names, locations of businesses, cities, countries and much more. This makes it possible, for example, to find the closest coffee shop quickly, or to find the quickest route in an unfamiliar city. The amount of data in these GIS databases is increasing at a substantial rate and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
A relatively recent development is the ability to access satellite imagery and terrain through GIS databases online. This enables a user (with tools running inside a browser) to zoom into a massive map of the world and view any desired site from a satellite. In many case, the terrain of the selected area is often available as well. The detail level of this data varies for different areas of the world, but for most populated areas the detail level is rapidly approaching a level where this data is usable in the conceptual stage of a civil engineering project.